Calendar

2018 Programs

The 1730 Conant House is open Monday-Friday, 10 am to 3 pm and Saturday, 10 to 1, for self-guided tours to see our exhibit, “Falmouth: Changing with the Times”. The Hallett Barn Visitors Center features “We Who Adventure Far” about whaling in Falmouth. Our Cultural Center rotates exhibits throughout the year, including celebrating the 50th anniversary of the College Light Opera Company. Additionally, the Museums on the Green offers a full range of adult and family programs, including our 2018 Lecture Series. Costs to most lectures are $ 5 for members and $ 8 for non-members, and are held at our Cultural Center, 35 Katharine Lee Bates Road, Falmouth. We also offer historical trolley rides on Wednesdays during the fall (reservations required), and in the Spring and Summer, walking tours of Falmouth on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 10 am (weather permitting).

Randall Fuller, “The Book that Changed America”

October 11 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

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Throughout its history America has been torn in two by debates over ideals and beliefs. Randall Fuller takes us back to one of those turning points, in 1860, with the story of the influence of Charles Darwin’s just-published On the Origin of Species on five American intellectuals, including Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, the child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace, and the abolitionist Franklin Sanborn.

Each of these figures seized on the book’s assertion of a common ancestry for all creatures as a powerful argument against slavery, one that helped provide scientific credibility to the cause of abolition. Darwin’s depiction of constant struggle and endless competition described America on the brink of civil war. But some had difficulty aligning the new theory to their religious convictions and their faith in a higher power. Thoreau, perhaps the most profoundly affected all, absorbed Darwin’s views into his mysterious final work on species migration and the interconnectedness of all living things.

Creating a rich tableau of nineteenth-century American intellectual culture, as well as providing a fascinating biography of perhaps the single most important idea of that time, The Book That Changed America is also an account of issues and concerns still with us today, including racism and the enduring conflict between science and religion.